To:G. Y. SOKOLNIKOV

Dictated:Dictated by telephone on February 1, 1922Published:First published inPravdaNo. 79, March 21, 1931.

      Printed from a typewritten copy.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1976],

      Moscow,Volume 35,

      page546.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

ComradeSokolnikovCopy to Comrade Tsyurupa and Comrade Krzhizhanovsky

Yousaid to me that some of our trusts may, in the
immediate future, find themselves without any money and ask us
in an ultimatum to nationalise them. I think that trusts
and factories have been founded on a self-supporting basis
precisely in order that they themselves should be
responsible and, moreover, fully responsible, for their enterprises
working without a deficit. If it turns out that they have not
achieved this, then, in my opinion, they must be prosecuted
and punished, as regards all the members of their boards
of management, by prolonged terms of imprisonment (
perhaps applying conditional release after a certain time),
confiscation of all their property, etc.

If,after setting up trusts and enterprises on a self–
supporting basis, we do not prove able by business-like, mercantile
methods fully to protect our interests, we shall turn out to be
complete idiots.

TheSupreme Economic Council must watch over this,
but still more the People’s Commissariat of Finance through
the Stale Bank and through special inspectors, since it is
precisely the People’s Commissariat of Finance which, not
being directly interested, is obliged to establish effective
and real control and supervision.